Drilling Permit Data

A drilling permit (Form W-1) is the first public trace of a well. It names the operator, the lease, the field, the intended depth and — since the OGA049M files — the surface and bottomhole coordinates. Permits are the leading indicator everyone watches: a permit issued today is a rig on location in weeks and a completion report in months.

RRC publishes the same permit records four ways: a monthly master, a monthly master-plus-trailer, a nightly file with latitude and longitude, and an end-of-month file with latitude and longitude. The pending file covers applications that have not been approved yet, and the W-1 imaged files are the scanned forms and plats behind them.